Teffinger nodded.
He’d read every word of it later.
Okay.
Now what?
The scene at the railroad spur jumped into his thoughts-four women in two graves. Assuming that Chase and Mia Avila were somehow connected, that still only made two women.
“Have any other women in Pueblo shown up missing?” he asked.
The young detective retreated in thought.
“Not that I’m aware of,” she said.
They stepped outside and locked the door behind them. Three Harleys rumbled up the street and then disappeared in the other direction.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Torres said, “there is one other woman who has technically dropped off the radar screen, but we’re pretty sure why.”
Teffinger spotted a twig on the ground, picked it up and snapped it.
“Who’s that?”
“A local prostitute named Gretchen Smith.”
Teffinger looked her straight in the eyes, because Chase had been a prostitute in a way, and in fact disappeared the day she went to meet a client.
“Tell me about Gretchen Smith.”
“We’re working another case involving a biker who got beat to death on his driveway,” Torres said. “First he got his face punched in, almost beyond recognition, and then got his head smashed in-we think with a rock, although we never found it. Anyway, it turns out that he had a fairly serious altercation with an Indian in a bar a couple of nights before that.”
“An Indian?”
“Well,” she said, “maybe I spoke too fast because we don’t know that for sure. What we do know is dark skin and a long black ponytail, and half the people we talked to thought he was an Indian. Anyway, he’s a person of interest.”
“Okay.”
“He’s apparently big enough and strong enough to do what got done,” she added.
“Got it.”
“But there’s a side issue,” she said. “The victim and a couple of his friends reportedly raped Gretchen Smith at some point in the past, although nothing ever came of it legally. It was pretty common knowledge that she’d take her revenge if she ever got a chance. So, some of the victim’s biker friends were looking to ‘interview’ her to find out if she was behind it somehow. When we found that out, we contacted her and told her she’d probably be safer if she got out of town until the whole thing blew over. As far as we can tell, she took our advice, because she checked out of the hotel she was staying at and no one’s seen her since.”
“Maybe the bikers found her,” Teffinger suggested.
Torres shrugged.
“I doubt it,” she said. “There’s no buzz around town to that effect.”
79
DAY TWELVE-SEPTEMBER 16
FRIDAY MORNING
On the way to work Friday morning, Aspen noticed that the Accord’s gas gauge was on empty, below empty in fact. Luckily she had enough fumes left to get her to a station where she prepaid $20 cash and filled up while “Sweet Child of Mine” played on the radio. She was wearing dark green Dockers and a white cotton blouse, after learning last week that Fridays were casual dress at the firm. When she got to the parking lot twenty minutes later she discovered she was a dollar short. So she drove over to the side streets on the far side of Broadway until she found a 2-hour parking spot and then hoofed it double-time to the firm.
When she got there, she didn’t go up to the office.
Instead, she went to Parking Level 3, where the firm had several reserved spots, and hid behind a van in the corner. She stayed there for over an hour.
Feeling a lot more like a thief than a lawyer.
But she eventually got what she wanted.
Namely, a look at the faces of the people who drove the law firm’s silver BMWs.
When she finally arrived at her office, an envelope was on her chair. Inside, as before, she found a computer-printed piece of paper warning her that Christina Tam was a spy. This time, however, instead of shredding it she marched into Christina’s office, shut the door, and handed it to her.
“This is the second one of these that someone left on my chair,” she said.
Christina had no idea what the letter meant. She did know, however, that she wasn’t a spy and that the whole thing was a lie.
A vicious lie.
Totally preposterous.
Obviously spread by someone with an agenda-Derek Bennett, no doubt, since he was the one with something to gain by driving a wedge between Aspen and Christina.
“That means he knows what we’re up to,” Aspen said.
“Agreed. But how much? And how does he know?”
Aspen had no idea.
Unless he had a camera in his office, or something like that.
Then she changed subjects.
She told Christina about her meeting yesterday with Sarah Ringer at CU, who reported that her sister Rachel had been sexually attacked in her office.
“I know in my heart that Derek Bennett was the one who did it,” Aspen said. “My guess is that he threatened her life to keep her quiet.”
Christina frowned.
“Agreed,” she said. “But it will be impossible to prove it, now that Rachel’s dead and we no longer have her testimony.”
“Fine. We get him for her murder, then.”
Later that morning, Aspen shut her office door, dialed Teffinger, and told him everything she knew, including her theory that Derek Bennett sexually assaulted Rachel one night in her office. And then later cut her head off when she started to leave the firm, just to be absolutely sure that she didn’t change her mind about going to the police.
Teffinger asked her a lot of questions.
He was all over the board as if struggling with a way to fit it into a bigger picture.
He was almost about to hang up when he said, “What about the BMWs?”
“Oh, right, I almost forgot. Derek Bennett definitely has one of them, the one with Colorado plate number BMW 4.”
“Hold on, I’m writing it down…”
“By the way,” she added. “You can’t tell anybody about any of this.”
80
DAY TWELVE-SEPTEMBER 16
FRIDAY MORNING
Draven slowly muscled his way out of bed, the victim of too much alcohol last night. At first he couldn’t get his bearings, then recognized the farmhouse. Gretchen was already awake and making noise in the kitchen.
He couldn’t remember his mouth ever being this dry. He drank a full glass of water, then another.
It tasted like crap.
But already his tongue didn’t feel quite so much like sandpaper.
He took a hot shower and then Gretchen filled his stomach with pancakes and coffee, after which he started to feel like a human being again.
To top it off, she led him into the bedroom and gave him a really deep blowjob.
Yesterday had been a bitch, but someone must like him because everything turned out okay in the end. He managed to catch the woman, Mia Avila, before she made it down to Highway 119. Then he dragged her ass back to the cabin, beat the shit out of her and tied her to the bed.
With some effort, he finally managed to pry the hood of the car up and got the radiator filled with water. Then he put the bitch in the trunk, drove her to the farmhouse, pumped her full of drugs, and chained her securely in the cab of the tow truck in the barn.
He limped the Nissan back to Avis, explained what had happened, and learned that the damage was covered under rental insurance that they’d tacked on without him knowing it. He rented another car, this time a green VW Jetta, and picked Gretchen up downtown as if nothing had happened.
He’d celebrated by getting drunk with Gretchen last night.
She didn’t know they were celebrating.
She thought they were just having a good time.
That was yesterday. Now, today, he had all that behind him and was the owner of a happy gut and an even happier dick.
“So what’s the plan?” Gretchen asked.
He smiled and slapped her ass.